‘If I go back, I’ll die’: Colombian town scrambles to accommodate 10,000 migrants

Necocli, population 20,000, faces bottleneck as Covid rules lift and unrest, poverty and violence grow across region

When the loudspeaker announced that the day's last boat across Colombia's Gulf of Uraba would begin boarding, a desperate scrum of Haitians rushed forward, jostling for spaces on the rickety craft.

Most had been stuck in this remote Caribbean coastal town for days, trapped in a migration bottleneck caused by the loosening of Covid travel restrictions and growing unrest, poverty and violence across the region.